


These Things Happen

by Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep



Series: Ghosts in Their Own Castle [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, implied/referenced child abandonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-26 23:51:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6260857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep/pseuds/Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosette in the Sorting line and how she got there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Things Happen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashie/gifts).



> There are references to canon-like incidences of child abuse in Cosette's past. 
> 
> It isn't stated, but this Cosette has a developmental disability.

Here it is: Stone walls around more people than you’ve ever seen up close before. A swell of buzzing voices that you cannot decipher. All of them full of...substance, somethings, whole worlds probably. You with a feeling of familiar gray pressing down.

Here it is: A straight line between the heavy envelope owled to their front door one day and Papa’s heavy brow as he cupped your face in his hands on the train platform. “Be brave, my dear.” Perhaps magic, how he left you so fast. (You were excited to get a letter when none ever came to your little house with the hedges. You were still excited when Papa’s face turned white and he muttered to himself as he started pointing his wand at every shadow he came across again. He had gotten like a few times before, after all. He wouldn’t let you help check the contents of the house before you slept, he never did.)

Here it is: You were in some kind of place before Papa, and you are in some kind of place now. He gave you a lot of soft, beautiful days. He will come to take you back home next summer, or he won’t. These things happen. These things have happened. You still have to be a place you yourself can live in, regardless.

Here it is: The point on your back where the curly-headed kid standing in line behind you pokes as he bounces and mumbles, “So what house do you wanna be sorted into?” Just as the wave of people pushes you one spot up and you have no time to think about wanting because suddenly it’s your turn. 

You smile at the man who shouts “Fauchelevent, Euphrasie,” smile at the woman who sits you down on a stool and drops a dusty, wrinkled hat on you that immediately slips over your eyes, smile at everyone even though you’ve forgotten how to make words. Just in case it would help. When Papa had come to bring you out of the first bad place, he had loved how you smiled. 

Here it is: Time to be brave. 

Here it is: A whisper of cloth lifts from your eyes, and you hear a great boom of “SLYTHERIN!”

[Here is my attempt at summarizing Esther's story. I am not good at Hebrew.] 

**Author's Note:**

> ...I realized Cosette would be fucked up if she had to go to Hogwarts at age eleven, so I figured I'd lean into it. 
> 
> Also, Slytherin Cosette forever. 
> 
> (The boy in line behind her is Grantaire, Benjamin.)


End file.
